Where are all the female antagonists?

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Sylph_14

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First one that comes to mind (mostly cause I've been playing the game a lot lately) is Delilah in Dishonored's Brigmore Witches DLC. Heck, the entire last level is populated only by creepy witches and their zombie dogs.

Most others I can think of have already been mentioned on this thread. Except maybe Sophia Lamb from Bioshock 2? Maybe also Almalexia from Morrowind's Tribunal expansion. Bethesda series like Fallout and Elder Scrolls tend to have their share of female generic-wilderness-enemies for the player to mow through as well.
 

Seracen

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The two that come to mind for me are:

Kreia in KOTOR 2 was a "sneaky twist" baddie, and she was certainly NOT sexualized.

Ultimecia/Adel/Edea in FF8, though it was a bit of a confusing mess to discern who and what were the enemy half the time.

Those were my two classic examples, and my go-to's whenever asked.

Oh, I also consider Kuja from FF9 a woman, simply b/c I can't take him/her seriously otherwise...

Also agree with Parasite Eve...but I have yet to finish those games...

Frau Engel (Wolfenstein) and the Queen (Gears of War) are great examples in modern games, though I might posit that we really aren't aware of them for much of the game, and don't feel their impact so much as their underlings. Then again, the same can be said for my examples (though at least they are the final boss fights, in their cases).

Still, I must also mention the two biggest examples, IMO, and most impactful to their game...

GLADOS, and of course...SHODAN!!!



Sure, technically they are AI...but still!!!
 

ChristopherT

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I agree that female enemies and as antagonists are in shorter supply than the men, however, they still exist.

Metal Gear Solid series - Sniper Wolf, Fortune, The Boss, the B&Bs, the frogs.
Final Fantasy 8 - Edea, Ultimecia, Adel
Final Fantasy 9 - Garnet's Mom (do you fight her?), and Beatrix for a while.
Batman Arkham games - Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, Copperhead, mooks, and while you do not fight them Penguin's Birds
Parasite Eve - Eve
Resident Evil Code Veronica - Alexia Ashford
Resident Evil 2 - Female Zombies
Resident Evil 5 - Excella, Jill Mind Controlled Valentine
Resident Evil Revelations - Virus infected Rachel
Resonance of Fate - has female mooks
Catherine - Catherine, and/or the nightmare representations of Catherine and Katherine
Valkyria Chronicles - Selvaria
Valkyria Chronicles 2 - Audrey Gassenarl
Mass Effect 2 - Asari mooks, as well as an Asari boss fight or two.
Tomb Raider Anniversary and Underworld
Tomb Raider Reboot
The Binding of Issac - His Mother
Fatal Frame series - many female Ghosts and a few female ghosts who are the final bosses, main antags, villains
StarCraft 1 and 2. Zerg infested Sarah Kerrigan. Whom I cannot tell if OP understands was created back in 1998.
 

carnex

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Let, for sake of chaos add Elexis Sinclair fom SIN. Hypersexualized criminal mastermind that uses her sex appeal as a lethal weapon.
 

CaitSeith

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Metroid: Other M had a female antagonist.

Before the last battle, it's reveladed that Melissa had killed everyone in the space station and was controlling the creatures inside. At the end she's shot down with machine guns after freezing her with an ice beam.

But probably it doesn't count because it has an horrible last boss battle and ending sequence.
 

Schadrach

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Matthew Jabour said:
Just lovely. And when's the last time there was more than one female on the villain's side? 10,000 mooks and one Smurfette? That makes no sense!
You can't have female mooks! If you do, you'll have Anita and her ilk lining up to talk about how your game is about violence against women!

More seriously, equal opportunity mooks doesn't test well. To the point that if you look at Skyrim's systems hard enough, you realize that every type of enemy that has a gender at least slightly favors male versions (usually the list has an odd number of variants, and the extra is male). Bandits are more than 2/3 male (same as most other enemy lists, except they double list the male versions).

Personally, I'd love to see a game assign the gender of generic mooks randomly when spawned, including the ones that die in exceptionally horrific ways, even in in-engine cinematics. I think it would make a lot of folks uncomfortable in exactly the right way.
 

ArkhamJester

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Kaimax said:
-Ezio- said:
sure they are. Antagonist doesnt mean Villain. antagonist just means against the protagonists. which they both were at points in their story.
My point still stands, they're not good examples of a female antagonists.

As an Antagonist Muzet always and ALWAYS needs orders to act, and she's heavily dependent to people. To makes thing worse all of the people she's dependent on are all males. Jude, Maxwell and then Gaius.

To the game's credit, Muzet's codependency is portrayed in a very negative light. Maxwell is fed up with her needing to be told every little thing and even Gaius remarks more than once that he more or less regards her as fairly pathetic, despite having the power to create gravity wells on command. I can't say how the sequel treats her as i haven't played it yet, but I always regarded Muzet as pitiable but with a very rude awakening coming her way.
 

ExDeath730

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JohnZ117 said:
Lieju said:
Well, Meredith in Dragon Age 2 was a good female villain/antagonist in the sense that she wasn't sexualised, (you get no boob armour), she is a very physical fighter (I think it was a very concious choice to make the leader of the less physical mages a man and the templar knight a woman) and an older woman too.

All things we don't see as much as I'd like.

Her writing had issues, but none of those had anything to do with her gender.
Almost all of Act 3 had writing issues. Still greatly enjoyed the game, though.
Meredith was one of the things i liked about DA2, just for starters, i hate the "chanmail bikini" trope, because armor is supposed to protect, not to look cool. If it looks cool in the process? Nice, but only if it don't trade protection for it. Anyway, i liked her because she wasn't a hypocrite like the Mage leader, she was power hungry and a control freak, but at least she was a believer in her cause.

Some of my favourites have already been said, but i have two here from Bioware games:

Baldur's Gate 2 - Throne of Bhaal: She is the villain of the expansion, and the last boss and big bad of the game. I'm not gonna talk who she is, but she is smart, manipulative and almost won. And her end is umpleasant, there was no quarter because of her gender.

Knights of The Old Republic 2: Darth Traya is a very interesting character, you may not like her, or even expect who she is, but it doesn't mean she don't get the job done.
 

gyrobot_v1legacy

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Lieju said:
Batou667 said:
Lieju said:
It's not like those men are seen as expendable for their masculinity either.

Since those faceless grunts are generally blown away by male protagonists.

It relates back to the whole idea of men being the norm for most things.
Make a character (a standard enemy or a protagonist) a man, and it's business as usual.
Make them a woman, and it's suddenly a 'message'.

The only way we can get away from this idea is to have more even splits in all roles; more female protagonists and more female background characters and enemies.
I accept the male normative argument has some weight to it, but the idea that females can be combatants too - and in fact rival men in their killing ability - is nothing new. Think Lara Croft, The Bride from Kill Bill, Major Kusanagi (and all the other manga/anime kick-ass females), Catwoman, Wonder Woman, all the other female superheroes, and the "female assassin" genre of films like Aeon Flux, La Femme Nikita, Leon: The Professional, Hanna and Kick-Ass.

It seems we're willing to suspend our disbelief when it comes to protagonists. But the hordes of grunts, goons and henchmen? Oh, they've got to be men, it'd send an uncomfortable message if we had our hero smashing up women. It's weird; on the one hand we're ostensibly promoting an image of female competence and toughness, but the underlying message is almost that women can dish out punishment, but not take it.
Those 'female assasins' are still a minority.

There's also the matter of sexualization.
The females are often sexualized, and once you bring that in, you bring in a whole new bucketful of unfortunate implications.

If you sexualize a female who is doing the ass-kicking, it's different from sexualising a female character that has the crap beaten out of her.

That's one of the reasons why that Hitman nun-trailer was so criticized; the women were heavily sexualized, both in their outfits and the camera-angles, and then brutalized.

Sexualising male characters is way less common, especially the grunts, so it's very rare to see male enemies being put in the same situation, and there's no underlying suggestion that you should be titillated by the character you are beating up.
There is Tanaka from kurohyou 2 who wore a gimp suit and beat the shit outta you with his codpiece and shiv
 

Lugbzurg

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Skull Bearer said:
I'm amazed no one mentioned GLADOS here. Awesome female villain. Kick-ass game.
LOTS of people have mentioned GLaDOS. Over and over and over again!

Did anyone mention Gruntilda Winkybunion from Banjo-Kazooie yet? Then, there's also Zapper: One Wicked Cricket! It's got Maggie the Magpie. Let's not forget Cynder in The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning. (Although, popular fannon generated by a close friend of mine suggests it was actually the work of one "Zirra the Adalisk"!) Also, doesn't Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus have a female antagonist? Don't the Hyperdimension Neptunia games do this a lot, as well? Sly Cooper games probably have too, haven't they? ...Beyonetta?

Touhou. Definitely Touhou. No doubt. Touhou by default.
 

BloatedGuppy

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Seracen said:
Still, I must also mention the two biggest examples, IMO, and most impactful to their game...

GLADOS, and of course...SHODAN!!!
I actually came to this thread to say SHODAN, but the more I think about it, the more she doesn't qualify. It's not that she's an AI...GLaDOS is an AI, but was built off the personality of an actual woman, and is fully voiced by a woman, so it's more than fair to call "her" a "she". SHODAN was actually referred to as an "it" or a "he" in the first game, and only a "she" in the 2nd. SHODAN's voice is several overlapping voices, one of them male. And unlike GLaDOS, we are never given to understand that SHODAN's personality is a reflection of a living human being...it's just an AI gone mad. SHODAN is probably technically an "it".

But yeah I think of SHODAN as a girl too.
 

DataSnake

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In the first two Saints Row games, half the generic mooks (both gang and police) were female. In Saints Row The Third, STAG and the Morningstar were 50-50, and the Deckers' elite soldiers were all women. In addition, main antagonists included Tanya Winters, Jessica, Monica Hughes, the DeWynter sisters (though Viola did turn good after Kiki died), and Kia.
In Skyrim, the Forsworn, Thalmor, and all bandit groups were about 50-50, and I'm pretty sure the Draugr were too.
I haven't played Gears of War, but I remember reading somewhere that several locust types were female too.

EDIT: on the subject of Skyrim, what about Elenwen and Astrid?
 

Relish in Chaos

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Perhaps it?s because, at least outside of video games, they are plenty of female villains (e.g. Disney films) that are already criticised because it seems part of their evil-ness is that they?re often a Queen or Wicked Witch archetype (which may be why little girls prefer to be princesses, maintaining an innocent feminine image of prettiness, whereas queens are often fictionally framed as non-conformist, outright ugly, and/or overtly sexual temptresses).

Right now, I can only think of Juri from Super Street Fighter IV as a female antagonist. Then again, fighting games don?t tend to have much in the way of antagonists: more often final bosses than anything, since they lack real stories. But Juri fits most of the clichés of what you?d expect from a femme fatale villain ? extremely sadistic, revealing top, quotes implying lesbianism or at least bisexuality, demonic-looking red eye ? although she has a sympathetic backstory. I wouldn?t mind if she became the new antagonist of Street Fighter V, instead of M. Bison or a returning Gill clone again.

Maybe you can count Poison and Roxy from Final Fight too. Oh, and there?s the Queen Metroid from Metroid II: Return of Samus (another ?mother? antagonist from the Metroid series).
 

80sboy

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What? Men are inherently evil and deserve to die in violent horrible ways while women...? Well... sugar and spice and everything nice... you know!

;)
 

MysticSlayer

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At least far as I can remember in games I've played:

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door: There's the demoness at the end that possess Peach.

BioShock 2: Sophia Lamb is an incredible antagonist. Like Ryan, she was incredibly dedicated to her ideas, and she stops at nothing to carry them out. She's cold and calculating, and her threatening nature comes entirely from that aspect of her character. She's also quite a control freak, but not in the seduction sense.

Metroid Prime trilogy: Dark Samus is a reasonably threatening and interesting antagonist. Granted, she is technically genderless, but she at least takes the form of a woman.

Portal: Again, GLaDOS is technically genderless, but she speaks in a female voice, so I'm counting her. Probably one of the best personalities in games too.

That's the only four I'm really coming up with. Philippa and Sile weren't the antagonists from The Witcher 2, just two power-hungry sorceresses that were used by Letho to help carry out one of his assassinations. Outside of that, they only serve to set up the mandatory dragon fight that every fantasy game has to have. They're no more the antagonists than Javed was in the first game.

But yeah, female villains tend to just be valuable henchmen or expendable tools for the real antagonist. Then again, when arguing for better female representation, I sort of assumed that also meant in the antagonist category, not just protagonists or general NPC.
 

NoeL

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Matthew Jabour said:
NoeL said:
How could you all forget the Dark Queen from Battletoads? She's not a love interest, and you just punch her in the face until she dies (or runs away, I can't remember). She's pretty damn sexy though.

There's waaay more female antagonists than protagonists, but yes most of them are cliche. As are most male antagonists. Video game writing!
I mentioned the sex appeal part, didn't I? And personally, I haven't beaten Battletoads, which means that the only exposure I've had to her was...that photo. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing she's not exactly a well-rounded character in her own right.
She's an archetype. She's not supposed to be well-rounded. She's just evil, like Maleficent with skimpier clothes.
 

waj9876

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Vault101 said:
Zhukov said:
Well, there was recently Bloody Mary from The Wolf Among Us.
[spoiler/][img/]http://www.theoryofgaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Bloody_Mary.jpg[/img][/spoiler]

DAY-UM

now if I ever played that game I'd be upset she's not the protagonist/love interest
She's definitely not the protagonist, or a love interest. But...she does seem to have a crush on the main character. Or at least the main character back when he was out slaughtering and eating innocent people.

The main character is Bigby Wolf. AKA Big. B. Wolf. AKA The Big Bad Wolf. He's changed now. Sort of.

To put it into better context, Bigby is every "The Big Bad Wolf" in every fairy tale ever told about him. Three Little Pigs, Red Riding Hood, etc.

See, the series takes place in a modern day city. There are a bunch of "fables," people and creatures from fairy tales, who live among the normal people. The place they're from, the Homelands, was overrun and taken over by an "Emperor." They fled to the human world to escape.

Bigby was one of the last to leave, simply because he didn't care about the armies and such that would come after him. He could decide "Okay, I'm eating all of you." about an army, and it would happen. No one could stop him...Rather, it would take far more to stop him than it would be worth to expend.

He ate and killed many, many people in his day. There are many monsters and murderers within the fables that live in the human world, and they've basically been forgiven. Bigby is still widely feared and hated.
 

ABLb0y

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Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea part one has
Elizabeth, who's luring you away to kill you.

The Game of Thrones game has Cersei Lannister, who despite her usual characterization is never seen using her sexuality as a weapon.

Dragon Age 2 has Sister Petrice and Knight Commander Meredith Stannard, although everyone in that game is a villain, depending on your perspective.

The World Ends with you has Konishi, who's attractiveness takes a backseat to her coldness, ruthlessness and all around sadism. Also, I guess, Uzuki, who is pretty sadistic too, but has a redeeming quality in the fact she's in love with Kariya.

Gears of War has Queen Myrrah, although whether she counts as a villain or not depends on who you think is worse, COG or the Locust. Personally, I think both sides are equally appalling, so there you go.

The Queen from ICO.